People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1896 — Strikers Replaced by Machinery. [ARTICLE]

Strikers Replaced by Machinery.

Promoters of strikes argue to their comrades that unsuccessful efforts are nevertheless ultimately beneficial: but study of the subject has led me to take the opposite view, viz.: that all strikes of skilled workmen are, In the end, harmful to the participants. No one single canise has done more, in my opinion, to hasten the introduction of entirely automatic machinery in operations where a certain degree of skilled labor was considered indispensable than strikes on the part of such skilled employes. Numerous instances might be recalled where large manufacturers have, on account of strikes, cheerfully expended immense sums of money in perfecting automatic machinery, not primarily to effect economy in wages, but as an assurance against future danger from such causes. A notable instance of this nature occurred a few years ago at one of the largest iron and steel works in the world. In a certain department specially skilled men were able to make wages which now seem incredible. They were, however, paid a percentage upon the tonnage and. owing to enormous output, the profits of these operatives exceeded in some years that of many successful manufacturers having large capital at stake. These men considered themselves indispensable and struck, not for higher wages or shorter hours, but at the dictation of outsiders. When work was resumed they found their occupations gone forever. Automatic machinery had supplanted the former skilled labor. —Popular Science Monthly.